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After playing in excess of 200 new releases this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the concluding selections, despite being aware numerous stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. Currently, my only job is to except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another great game. So much for my intentions!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

With my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've discovered what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Strategic Roguelike Twist

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer who has stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Simple enough!

The Distinctive Central System

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, however. Every time you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you land in is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you opt on a safer line first and aim for less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I secured loot.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to work with to allow you to tweak the odds the way you want.

A Constant Tension

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have a high probability to land on the desired tile but wind up hitting a monster that would eliminate your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or when to move on to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some special skills. One hero's special power, powered up by clearing four squares, lets gamers to choose a vertical line instead of a horizontal line on a turn. By employing this strategically, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the final game is unleashed. A new character and a fresh guardian are expected to drop sometime in January. The official version likely won't be far behind, but the studio haven't announced a final date yet.

A Final Recommendation

No matter when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition during a run. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I will remain working on that task when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.